I don’t actually smoke crack, or turn tricks to score it. I don’t do meth either, although for a while there, being a huge Breaking Bad fan, I did start to warm up to the idea of cooking it. And I have a total hard-on for crappy old winnebagos.

I’m not a junkie parent, but I totally acted like one this Christmas. I don’t mean literally. I didn’t cut coke with a Toys R Us gift card, or scream things like “Watch out for the goddamn bats!” I didn’t have itchy sores on my face, except for the cluster of chin-zits I developed with the usual holiday chocolate overdose. I certainly wasn’t wasting away to nothing; pretty sure my pants are restricting blood flow to my lady garden right now.

Let me explain.

Max would get up at 8 a.m. and walk into our bedroom to see two pale, groggy, drooling creatures flaked out in bed. Say hello to the Mother of Year and her hairy prince.

“I’ll be right there, buddy. Cheerios or French toast?”
“Cheerios.”
“Oh thank GAWD.”

I was off for ten days. On almost every one of those days, Max got up and played by himself for anywhere between one to three hours. Alone. While Mommy and Daddy — and even the dog — slept in, or at least lounged around in bed checking facebook and playing Candy Crush. I am a crack whore. I am a meth head mommy, without the meth. And Max is this kid right here, with a 30% cleaner face:

Photo stolen from the Interwebs. That’s what tweakers do. They steal.

I hate myself so hard. I had ten days to do all the things the usual crazy workweek doesn’t allow: Walk the dog, organize the house, spend quality time with my son who I ship off to daycare five days a week. But instead, I chose to be a gigantic, lazy asshole with all the makings of a fabulous smackhead.

Today, the first Saturday since returning to work, it was a familiar scene. Max got up around 8 a.m. and skipped out to the living room to play on the X-Box. And we douchenozzles lay in bed, trying to block out the sound of Lego Luke Skywalker decapitating stormtroopers. But then…BAM! Actually, it was the opposite of BAM! It was a lowercase bam, with no exclamation mark. Bam. Everything went quiet. No Jedi sound effects. No dull hum of the air exchanger. Only the sound of small, flat feet approaching our bedroom. “Mommy, the X-Box is not working.”

Holy sith-spawn! The power was gone.

With no X-Box, iPad or TV, Turbo Ginger had to kick it old school for the rest of the day. Puzzles. Books. Action figures. Even bubble wrap.

This tweet was shown on CBC News Network today. Max’s official national television debut. (Yes, Mommy still had Twitter. Shut up.)

And, since Max can’t read, or assemble a 100-piece puzzle solo, or have a lightsaber fight with himself, Mommy had to be an active participant.

A sincere thank-you to the power company people. No really, thanks for the intervention. Now, if you could just restore our power so I can cook some french toast. And maybe a little crystal.